My First Few Days as a Fieldy

**Written November 20, 2011.  Post delay due to lack of internet.

It has been a few days now since I arrived at Prominent Hill, so I though I would give everyone a brief overview of my life at the mine. 

I arrived Wednesday afternoon after a 2:40h flight which stopped in Port Augusta.  It's a bit strange to have a whole flight of people who are all going to the same job site as you, since usually you're quite anonymous on an airplane.  Unfortunately my pictures from the plane didn't really turn out, but this was just as we were landing in Port Augusta and you can see where the ocean meets the Outback.

When I arrived I met someone from my team and got my room assignment, but then had the afternoon to myself.  Since my room hadn't been cleaned from the previous person yet I decided to go for a swim in the amazing pool they have here.  It's about 4 lanes and I'm guessing almost 25m long, and it is the perfect temperature; it's just cold enough to cool you off after a hot day. 

Overall the facilities here are quite impressive.  The food is surprisingly good for buffet food and they have a lot of healthy options (and not so healthy ones) to choose from, as well as a huge variety of both hot and cold food.  During breakfast you also pack your lunch for that day, and that has also been pretty good.  They have tons of salad options usually, as well as leftover hot food, meat pies, and all the typical sandwich fixings.  My room is pretty good (bed, tv, desk, bathroom) and the neighbours are quiet. 

The job itself is repetitive but completely learnable and manageable.  I think I'm doing a really good job, and hopefully I'll learn some more things soon.  Here's a picture of the core shed I've been working in for the past few days. 

Basically I take the drill core from those black trays, lay them out on the bench and make sure they all fit together.  Then I mark them, measure them, and put them back in the black trays.  Easy.  It's also a bit more of a social job since there are always other people working on the other rows around you.  There are other jobs in other sheds that I haven't learned yet, but this one is pretty good so far.  The hardest part is physically standing for 12 hours.  My legs are doing alright, but my feet are absolutely killing me.  We get two 15 minute breaks and a 40 minute lunch break, but that's the only sitting for the whole day.  Going from being unemployed to this has been extremely hard for me, but I'm doing my best to be optimistic.  I keep telling myself it's great to break in my feet for hiking in New Zealand!

Where we work is in between the Village (where everyone eats/sleeps/exercises) and the Pit (the massive mine), so this is the view we have every day from work.  Again, not a good picture since it was from my phone.

There is also a large area outside where we lay out all of the trays for the geologists to look at (hence why Ryan is getting a tan and I'm not!)

Today we were moving some of these trays and found a ton of wolf spiders.  From what I understand they can get quite big (the ones we saw were smaller than a bottle cap) and you'll have to go to the hospital if they bite you, but they won't kill you.  I've also seen a few hawks and wedge tailed eagles, which makes sense since there are mice everywhere!  One ran up my leg while I was reading at a desk in the core shed.  Gross.  Unfortunately that probably means there are snakes around, but it also means there are cool lizards like the goannas that hang out around camp.  I don't have a picture of them yet, but hopefully I will soon.

Anyways, I think that's all of the excitement for now.  I'm exhausted and pretty much go to bed as soon as I get off the phone with Ryan around 9pm.  I've been getting up at 4:40am, which has actually been the easiest part of the job.  I have cell reception so I can check email and stuff, but unfortunately no computer internet.